Another Queen leaves the Clyde

AN 8,000-tonne hull section of the Royal Navy's latest aircraft carrier has been completed.

The towering construction is the first part to go into dry dock as HMS Queen Elizabeth is pieced together.

At 66 feet (20 metres) high and 207ft (63m) long, the section was slowly moved out of a hall at a BAE Systems shipyard in Govan, Glasgow, yesterday to be loaded on to a sea-going barge tomorrow.

The mid-section of hull, "lower block 03", is being taken to Rosyth on the Forth to join a bow section which arrived from Devon last year.

The 65,000-tonne ship, the first of two such carriers, is expected to be operational by 2020. The first steel for the vessel was cut in July 2009.

The 919ft (280m) carrier, along with its sister vessel HMS Prince of Wales, survived last autumn's defence review despite massive cuts elsewhere in the Ministry of Defence budget.